Close X
Sunday, November 10, 2024
ADVT 
Tech

Twitter Posts Can Reveal How Lonely You Are: Study

Darpan News Desk IANS, 06 Nov, 2019 09:20 PM
  • Twitter Posts Can Reveal How Lonely You Are: Study

Researchers have found that users who tweet on loneliness are much more likely to write about mental well-being issues and things like struggles with relationships, substance use and insomnia on Twitter.


By applying linguistic analytic models to tweets, researchers were able to gain an insight into the topics and themes that could be associated with loneliness.


"Loneliness can be a slow killer, as some of the medical problems associated with it can take decades to manifest," said the study's lead author Sharath Chandra Guntuku, from University of Pennsylvania in the US.


"If we are able to identify lonely individuals and intervene before the health conditions associated with the themes we found begin to unfold, we have a change to help those much earlier in their lives. This could be very powerful and have long-lasting effects on public health," Guntuku said.


By determining typical themes and linguistic markers posted to social media that are associated with people who are lonely, the team has uncovered some of the ingredients necessary to construct a 'loneliness' prediction system.


As part of the study, published in the journal BMJ, researchers analysed public accounts from users based in Pennsylvania and found that 6,202 accounts used words such as 'lonely' or 'alone' more than five times between 2012 and 2016.


Comparing the entire Twitter timelines of these users to a matched group who did not have such language included their posts, the researchers showed that 'lonely' users tweeted nearly twice as much and were much more likely to do so at night.


When the tweets were analysed via several different linguistic analytic models, the users who posted about loneliness had an extremely high association with anger, depression and anxiety, when compared to the 'non-lonely' group.


Additionally, the lonely groups were significantly associated with tweeting about struggles with relationships (for example, using phrases like 'want somebody' or 'no one to') and substance use ('smoke,' 'weed,' and 'drunk')


"On Twitter, we found lonely users expressing a need for social support, and it appears that the use of expletives and the expression of anger is a sign of that being unfulfilled," Guntuku said.


Users in the group that didn't post about loneliness seemed to display some social connections, as they were found to be more likely to engage in conversations, especially by including others' user names (using '@twitter_handle') in their tweets.


In the future, the researchers hope to develop a better measure of the different dimensions of loneliness that online users are feeling and expressing.

MORE Tech ARTICLES

WhatsApp To End Support For BlackBerry Devices By End Of This Year

WhatsApp To End Support For BlackBerry Devices By End Of This Year
It says it wants to focus its efforts on mobile platforms most used by consumers, which it says are Google, Apple and Microsoft operating systems.

WhatsApp To End Support For BlackBerry Devices By End Of This Year

Lockdown: Apple Could Make It Even Tougher To Hack iPhones

Lockdown: Apple Could Make It Even Tougher To Hack iPhones
Suppose the FBI wins its court battle and forces Apple to help unlock an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino killers. That could open all iPhones up to potential government scrutiny — but it's not the end of the story.

Lockdown: Apple Could Make It Even Tougher To Hack iPhones

With Its New S7 Phone, Samsung Looks Even More Like Apple

With Its New S7 Phone, Samsung Looks Even More Like Apple
Apple and Samsung phones, which have been looking more and more alike over the past few years, are much closer to virtual twins with Samsung's latest Galaxy S7.

With Its New S7 Phone, Samsung Looks Even More Like Apple

Facebook's 'Like' Button Gets 'Angry' And 'Sad' As Friends, 7 Thinks To Know

Facebook's 'Like' Button Gets 'Angry' And 'Sad' As Friends, 7 Thinks To Know
Here are seven things to know about Facebook's latest feature, known as Reactions.

Facebook's 'Like' Button Gets 'Angry' And 'Sad' As Friends, 7 Thinks To Know

US Engineers Achieve Passive Wi-Fi At 10,000 Times Less Power

US Engineers Achieve Passive Wi-Fi At 10,000 Times Less Power
The new "Passive Wi-Fi" system also consumes 1,000 times less power than existing energy-efficient wireless communication platforms, such as Bluetooth Low Energy and Zigbee

US Engineers Achieve Passive Wi-Fi At 10,000 Times Less Power

La Loche High School To Welcome Students Back Friday With Added Security

La Loche High School To Welcome Students Back Friday With Added Security
The Northern Lights School Division says an RCMP school resource officer and three security staff will also be at the La Loche Community School when classes resume.

La Loche High School To Welcome Students Back Friday With Added Security